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Chapter 404: The Lion in the Valley

“Their foraging parties were large, too large for all of them to be hit, but we got quite a few,” Grim reported to Leon. “Our casualties were minimal, while theirs were substantial.”

“Define ‘minimal’ and ‘substantial’,” Leon said, his eyebrow rising almost into his hair at the mention of their casualties.

“… We lost three knights, and seven more were wounded,” the fifth-tier knightess reported.

“Balance that against the hundred or so at least that we killed, and I’d say this was a win,” the fifth-tier knight said.

“I’d rather this not become a game of numbers,” Leon said, interrupting the argument that he could sense coming. “We have so few people that turning this into a battle of attrition won’t get us very far. As it is, if they realize just how badly we’re outnumbered, I’d guarantee that they’ll just push right through, eating whatever casualties we inflict. I think the only reason they haven’t done so already is simply because our first raid was so devastating.”

The rest of the group’s leadership around Leon nodded. They were all sitting on a cliffside overlooking a good portion of the valley, and they could see the castle that Octavius’ people had taken in the distance, mostly because of the clearing of the forest around it to build their palisade.

“Have these reports been sent back to Dame Minerva?” Leon asked.

“They have been,” Alix responded. She had been quite diligent in keeping Minerva up to date regarding what they had been doing, though from what Minerva had sent back to them, the fighting in the pass to Ironford was keeping them from sending reinforcements. Fortunately, it seemed that Minerva, Roland, and Brimstone had been so far successful in their endeavors to hold the pass, but Leon had been hoping for at least a few hundred more knights and men-at-arms with which to accomplish his own task.

“No sign of reinforcements?” Leon further asked.

“None,” Alix replied.

‘Shit,’ Leon bitterly thought. “All right,” he said out loud, “if we want to convince our opponents that we’re a lot more numerous than we are, then we’re going to have to step this up.”

—

Night fell upon the valley, and Leon and the rest of his people ventured back out into the forest. Leon hadn’t ordered any further attacks during the daytime since it was risky to move around in the forest when so many of their enemies were out hunting and foraging for supplies.

At night, however, Octavius’ people retreated back into their camp. On the one hand, this meant that Leon’s knights hadn’t much opportunity to attack them, but it also gave them the run of the forest.

Leon watched the camp with most of the rest of his force behind him. The camp was quite large, but its defenses prevented another raid like what they had accomplished two nights ago. However, that wasn’t Leon’s goal. Rather, he kept the only gate in and out watched, waiting to see what would happen.

If nothing would happen at all during the night, he’d simply hit the gate with arrow fire and call it a night. However, if he were in charge of the camp, he’d have patrols sent out to ensure the safety of the camp and to keep an eye on the villages.

It seemed that whoever was in charge in the camp had the same mindset as Leon, as not even an hour after the sun fell below the western horizon, about two hundred mounted knights came riding out of the gate.

Leon smiled. Horses were the staple of the landed nobility, as they were the only people rich enough in both coin and land to raise a cavalry force. Legions focused almost entirely on infantry, with some care paid to archers, but for the most part, horsemen were limited to nobles and the knights who served them.

Leading this particular band of knights was a middle-aged woman riding a large stag. The stag was at least half again as large as the largest destrier trotting behind it, with rich brown fur and tree-branch-like antlers. Based on its muscular form and the fourth-tier aura Leon could sense from it, he could tell that it was strong for a war beast, and as a mount, it was probably faster than any other horse he’d ever seen employed in the Bull Kingdom.

‘That creature doesn’t have a damn thing on Anzu, though,’ Leon thought with more than a little bit of pride in his griffin, who was crouched far back from the tree line, hiding his shiny white body in the shadows of the forest.

It was a large patrol—if a patrol was actually what it was. No matter what, Leon knew that he had found his target, and once the knights had ridden off, his people turned around and slipped back into the forest.

From the back of Anzu and about a thousand feet in the air, Leon could, with some difficulty due to the tree cover, track the movements of this unit of knights. Once he figured out that they were on their way to one of the nearby villages, the makings of a plan began to form in his head, and a vicious smile spread across his face.

—

Along the route back to their camp, the mounted knights and their men-at-arms slowly made their way through the forest. Their formation wasn’t as tight as it could’ve been simply due to how broken the terrain was, but they moved in a reasonably neat formation.

That changed as soon as the head of the column erupted in an explosion of lightning that enveloped the twenty or so knights and men-at-arms at the formation’s head. A moment later, before those further back could process what was happening and react accordingly, arrows began to rain down upon them, along with a few lightning bolts, fireballs, and ice spikes.

Octavius’ troops were strong and well equipped, but in ten seconds, a third of their number had fallen, and the arrows just kept raining down into them from all sides, finding gaps in their armor or targeting the lightly armored horses beneath them.

The leaders of the patrol were the first to be targeted, and the formation began to fall apart as those in charge were killed or incapacitated. Some of the knights tried to charge out on their horses into the dark forest to try and find the unseen archers. A few managed to find their quarry and engage them in melee combat, but most that tried were quickly targeted and put down with accurate arrow fire.

The unlucky knights at the back were unable to retreat, as Lapis appeared as if from nowhere behind them—in the Eastern Territories, there were more than enough boulders around for the stone giant to hide with ease, and that wasn’t even going into how well it could hide underground. Lapis crashed into the back of their formation, crushing many knights beneath its stony fists and terrifying their horses.

A few of the knights had bows of their own and tried to shoot back, but ultimately, about five minutes after the Thunderblast spell went off, the patrol sent out by Octavius’ knights had been completely defeated.

Not all the knights were killed in the fighting, though. In fact, many survived with various injuries, while some of the weaker men-at-arms and squires surrendered once all the knights were defeated.

Leon was sorely tempted to have them all killed. He wanted no prisoners, no survivors to report back on their numbers, but when he looked around at those who had accompanied him, he knew that that wasn’t an attractive option. One of the knights that followed him had even fallen at the side of one of Octavius’ knights that had fallen with an arrow in his belly and was tending to his wounds with the care of someone who personally knew him.

Roland’s words before the battle at the Naga wound their way back into his head. These weren’t enemies, truly. They were fellow citizens of the Bull Kingdom. If they were warriors of the Talfar Kingdom or invading Valemen, Leon figured there would be little hesitation if he were to order them killed. But these were fellow countrymen. Until just a few days ago, they were comrades in arms. Many of them were still lovers, friends, and family members.

And so, it was with a groan that Leon had his people pull back after collecting their own dead and injured, leaving those who survived their ambush behind, tied to trees, to wait for those who would sally out of their camp to find them. Leon could only hope that leaving them alive wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass.

—

Over the course of the night, Leon’s group ambushed three more patrols sent out from the camp, all of them of similar size to the first. In total, roughly five hundred of Octavius’ knights and men-at-arms had either been killed or wounded severely enough to take them out of the fight for a good long while.

It wasn’t all good news, though, as Leon could say the same about fifty of his own people. He was left with one hundred and fifty, while he barely put a dent in his opponent. He only had so many people to work with, and at this rate, it was a matter of time until they took so many casualties that they couldn’t fight any longer. As they were, every knight they lost weakened them by an almost noticeable margin, and though their casualties were light by most standards, he’d still lost a full quarter of those under his command.

Another night like that, and he couldn’t in good conscience continue the campaign as he had been. It was time to switch tactics.

Octavius’ army didn’t move the following day. Leon couldn’t infiltrate the camp as he had been, so he had no idea why they were staying put, but he guessed it was because of a supply issue or they simply didn’t want to leave their most wounded people behind while the rest continued onward. No matter what the reason was, they stayed for another day. Leon led an ambush during the day on a patrol bringing supplies back to the camp, but he didn’t stay to win the fight. He fired a single Thunderblast at the head of the column, and all of his people fired only three quick arrows before retreating back into the forest while Octavius’ fighters were still confused and trying to figure out what had just happened.

Consequently, the casualties inflicted were significantly lighter, but Leon’s force escaped without taking a single loss. Fighting this way meant that Lapis couldn’t be used to its greatest efficiency, but a single stone giant, while powerful, wasn’t invincible, and Leon wasn’t going to squander his one advantage and a profoundly loyal follower on relatively small and strategically insignificant patrols.

Leon was a bit conflicted about fighting like this, as it would undoubtedly tell Octavius’ people that his force was tiny compared to theirs. However, he couldn’t continue to risk his people fighting as he had been, he simply didn’t have the numbers to do so. It gave him a terribly impotent feeling, and he could only comfort himself with the reminder that it wasn’t his job to defeat this force, he just had to delay it until the 7th Legion arrived. In that respect, he felt like he was more than doing his job, for the army had been practically halted in this valley less than sixty miles from Ironford for almost three days.

Leon hoped he could squeeze just another couple of days out of this. He hadn’t received any word about where the 7th Legion was, but it had to have gotten close by now; it was only a week out from Ironford when Minerva called them in. That should leave them three or four days away, perhaps even as few as two if they moved quickly enough. If Leon could hold this army off for just two more days, then even if he let them continue moving toward Ironford, the 7th Legion would catch up before they reached the city.

Assuming that the 7th Legion was actually on its way, of course. Without word from them, Leon could only take it on faith that they were still marching his way, and faith was not something Leon had in abundance.

Needless to say, despite his accomplishments, he still felt anxious as all hells for what would come in the next couple of days.

Another day passed about as well as the last had gone, with Leon’s people hitting Octavius’ with hit and run attacks, never stopping long enough to engage in any serious fighting. However, the knights they were fighting against were moving out in greater and greater numbers, making it more and more difficult to move in the valley. With the attacks lessening in intensity and frequency, it didn’t take Leon by too much surprise when he saw Octavius’ knights surging out from their camp on the morning of the fifth day since Tarsus had been killed. It was clear that they were once again moving toward Ironford, and they moved with great purpose as if the spirits of their angry Ancestors were on their heels.

Leon had no choice but to respond in kind, for there was still no sign that he could see of the 7th Legion.